New Bedford veteran gets back to civilian life, earns baseball honors

Tyler Andrade came back from Afghanistan with an intact body but a broken heart. He worked his way back toward normal using the best tool he could find: baseball.

TIM WEISBERG

We often refer to sports in the vernacular of war, treating players like soldiers marching off to "do battle" against the opposition.

But for New Bedford's Tyler Andrade, the real battle was coming back home from a year-long tour in Afghanistan and soldiering on after the loss of his cousin, best friend and "battle buddy" Ethan Goncalo. And finding his way back in the sport he left behind was part of the way to win that fight.

"Before the military, baseball was everything to me," said Andrade, a private in the U.S. Army National Guard who recently completed his service. "If I struck out, I felt like the world had ended. But now, it's just a game, a getaway from regular life that I can go out and enjoy stress-free. I have quite a few buddies who were badly injured over there — legs blown off and such — and they don't have the getaway like I do. A lot of those guys are still searching for it."

Andrade just completed his sophomore season at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, where he was a star catcher on the baseball team — and was recently honored as a First-Team All-New England selection.

After graduating from GNB Voc-Tech in 2008, where he studied heating and air conditioning, Andrade chose Massasoit because the Warriors have a tradition of winning, and longtime head coach Tom Frizzell has a long history of recruiting baseball players from the SouthCoast. But financial issues kept Andrade from continuing past the fall semester, and there were other concerns as well.

"He did very well on the field, but academically, he wasn't ready to spend the time," Frizzell said. "As an 18-year-old, Tyler just wasn't ready."

Like Andrade, Goncalo had also left school. He was thinking about joining the military, and wanted his cousin to join him.

"It had always crossed our minds as kids, but it was never our plan growing up," Andrade said. "Baseball was it."

Still, both young men enlisted in the U.S. Army National Guard and ended up in the 181st Infantry together, based in Worcester. They were deployed to Afghanistan on July 31, 2010.

"I thought I knew what to expect, but it was a culture shock," Andrade said. "There are no paved roads. People live in mud shacks with no plumbing. It's crazy."

And for the first time in their lives, there was no baseball.

"I brought my glove with me, and we might play catch here and there, or maybe a little wiffleball," he said.

Even though they were often on different assignments, Andrade and Goncalo spent as much time together in Afghanistan as they could. The two cousins celebrated Goncalo's 21st birthday in Kabul. Two weeks later, he was dead.

"He always had really bad migraines growing up and was on medication," Andrade explained. "One day, he was just found unconscious. It was a brain aneurysm. It's one of those things that you never expect, but then it all makes sense when you put it together later."

Andrade escorted Goncalo's body back to his hometown of Fall River, and then returned to Afghanistan to finish his tour without his cousin — who was more like a brother.

"It was surreal," he said. "At one point, I just went numb, and I was like that for the remainder of my deployment. I just got to the point where I had no feeling left."

Once his tour was over, Andrade returned to Massasoit. Armed with some money he had saved and more from the G.I. Bill, he was ready to rededicate himself to school work and baseball. But when Andrade stepped on the diamond at Massasoit for the first time since returning from Afghanistan, it felt a lot different than it did the last time he'd stood at home plate.

"Going overseas and serving put things into perspective," he said. "I was more relaxed and could take it as just a game. But I also suffered some injuries that slowed me down."

In high school, Andrade was an All-Star catcher for GNB Voc-Tech, as well as being an excellent football and basketball player.

Former Bears baseball coach John Quintal, who retired at the end of Andrade's senior season at Voc-Tech, can still recall some of his key at-bats, like the 3-run homer he hit against Fairhaven, or that the final out of Quintal's coaching career came on a line shot to third baseman off Andrade's bat.

"It was a hard line drive, and that's what he was all about," Quintal said. "He always was a hard-nosed kid, a tough kid, who always played hard."

Andrade had torn a quadriceps muscle while in Afghanistan, and also had some back and shoulder issues. It slowed him down both at the plate and on the basepaths, and made squatting down to perform his catcher duties all the harder. At the plate, he hit just about .260, as his timing was off and his frame was a little bulky.

"When he was overseas, he did a lot of heavy weight lifting, and he came back strong. He left at 160 and came back at 200, and some of those injuries came from almost being too strong," Frizzell said. "It took time to get his 'baseball body' back, and he really blossomed as a sophomore."

"Coming back happened so quickly," Andrade said. "I didn't have time to get back in the cages, and I didn't have time to study the opposing pitchers. This past season, I came in with a load of confidence, and confidence makes all the difference in baseball."

There was also the mental adjustment back to the game, as Andrade had to learn how to live a civilian life again while still mourning the loss of Goncalo. Andrade was one of only two veterans Frizzell has ever coached in his lengthy career, but the coach realized that it might take a little while for Andrade to overcome all he'd been through.

"He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, but I knew what he felt. His sense of loss was palpable," Frizzell said. "Most young adults struggle with some adversity in their lives, but this was obviously something very different. I was aware of the situation, but he never showed me that it was something he couldn't cope with."

Former Bishop Stang star Ethan Kelley was also playing for Massasoit, and the two started carpooling simply because they lived five minutes with one another in New Bedford and it would be easier to make the long commute together.

"I just thought at first, he seemed a little rusty, that he was just trying to get back on his feet baseball-wise," Kelley said. "At the end of last season, you could already see a 100-percent difference. Then we tried to work together as much as we could over the summer. He was always in the gym or the batting cage, trying to improve. I've never seen someone have that much of a turnaround from one season to another. It was absolutely incredible."

Batting .376, Andrade led the Warriors at the plate and also led the pitching staff in his role as starting catcher. But it was a season that almost wasn't.

"At times, I was struggling with whether or not I should stay in school," Andrade said. "I was 22 years old, which is pretty old for a college baseball player. I thought about giving it up and getting started on my career, because retirement comes quicker than you think. But Ethan (Kelley) was like, 'Dude, stick with it. I can tell by watching you that you're getting it back.' And so I stuck it out."

"He really did keep me going. He probably didn't even know it, but just talking with him, he definitely kept me motivated."

Andrade also had a similar effect on Kelley, as the two became close friends during the long drives together.

"Seeing him work so hard motivated me to work to the best of my ability and better myself," said Kelley, a left-handed pitcher who also earned First Team All-New England honors. "We both knew it was our last year at Massasoit, and we wanted to make one more run, to make sure we left our footprint at the school."

They certainly did just that, with Andrade taking a leadership role from the time he returned to the Warriors.

"It was like night and day, comparing how he was as an 18-year-old to how he is now," Frizzell said. "He's a quiet leader, and he leads by example. He's one of the first ones to show up for practice, even though he lives the furthest away. The players see the importance he puts not just on being on time, but also in getting the work done the best you can."

Now that Andrade is completely done with the National Guard, he is slowly but surely starting to feel like a civilian again. Besides school, he also works a summer job as a landscaper for Angel View Pet Cemetery in Middleboro. And he's playing summer baseball with Kelley in the Fall River Independent Baseball League, currently averaging .625 and wearing No. 38 in honor of Goncalo.

"You can just tell how close they were. They were more than cousins, they were like brothers," Kelley said. "It's really sad, but it's also amazing to see how it's turned (Andrade) into the person he's become."

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